The stabbed body of a well-dressed man is found slumped on a swing in a children's playground in the heart of Sheperd's Bush - Detective Inspector Bill Slider's patch. Initial investigations are impeded by a wall of silence, but this only serves to fuel Slider and his team's determination to solve the case before it gets taken off their hands and they have to face failure on their own doorstep.
Slider's trail unearths the victim's sordid lifestyle of debts, drugs and dodgy deals. The police are led from the seedy pubs of Shepherd's Bush through the brothels of Notting Hill to the mansions of Holland Park. As they probe deeper the body count rises and Slider suspects the machinations of a crime baron who will stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden.
Slider's personal life is just as complicated but maybe when this investigation is over he'll find out just what it is that Joanna has been trying to tell him . . .
